This website is being reviewed for updates. Some information is offline. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Skip to main content
Rural Health Information Hub

Rural Health
Resources by Type: Document

Emerging Strategies to Ensure Access to Health Care Services: Virtual Care Strategies
Discusses opportunities to use telehealth to improve healthcare access and delivery to vulnerable rural and urban communities. Includes recommendations from the American Hospital Association Task Force on Ensuring Access in Vulnerable Communities and details the benefits of telehealth services and potential policy solutions such as reimbursement, interaction of state and federal laws, broadband access, and federal research.
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association
view details
Staff Sharing Arrangements for Local Public Health
Describes several case studies of local public health organizations' arrangements for sharing health directors, physicians, nurses, inspectors, social workers, or administration staff. Includes descriptions of such arrangements in public health agencies in rural areas of Webster County, Iowa and in 3 adjacent northwestern Oregon counties with a mixture of urban, suburban, and rural areas.
Author(s): Gerald Young, Joshua Franzel
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organizations: Center for State & Local Government Excellence, Public Health Accreditation Board Center for Innovation
view details
Independent Grocery Stores in the Changing Landscape of the U.S. Food Retail Industry
Examines the performance of independent U.S. grocery stores in 2015, and reports on changes in the prevalence and performance of these stores between 2005 and 2015. Highlights the important role of rural independent grocery stores as employers, tax generators, and sources of healthy and specialty foods.
Author(s): Clare Cho, Richard Volpe
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: USDA Economic Research Service
view details
Meadville Medical Center: Care Coordination for Adults and Children
Describes the Meadville Medical Center Community Care Network (CCN), an interdisciplinary team of clinicians who focus on using care coordination to help patients manage chronic conditions and achieve their health and wellness goals. CCN's goal is to engage patients and encourage them to take ownership of their health, thereby reducing hospital readmissions, conserving resources, and improving the health of the population.
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association Rural Health Services
view details
Kalispell Regional Healthcare: Managing the Needs of Medically and Socially Complex Patients or Superutilizers
Details how Kalispell Regional Healthcare teamed with Mountain-Pacific Quality Health to introduce a modified transitional care model, which is designed to reduce service utilization and improve the health of high-cost, high-need patients. Initiative is part of a special innovations project through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and uses multidisciplinary "ReSource" teams to coordinate care and services across rural and underserved areas of Montana.
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association Rural Health Services
view details
Ensuring Access with a Hospital's Conversion to a Freestanding Emergency Department
Outlines Ellijay, Georgia-based North Georgia Medical Center's transition from a traditional community hospital to a freestanding emergency department (ED). Shares administrative, legal, and logistical challenges that, once overcome, resulted in Piedmont Mountainside Hospital Emergency Services - a successful, community-focused, freestanding ED.
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association Rural Health Services
view details
Concentrated Poverty Increased in Both Rural and Urban Areas Since 2000, Reversing Declines in the 1990s
Reports on trends in poverty rates between the 2000 Decennial Census and 2011-2015 American Community Survey (ACS). Examines spatially concentrated poverty, with a map showing county-level poverty rates for nonmetropolitan counties. Compares metropolitan and nonmetropolitan poverty rates by race/ethnicity.
Author(s): Brian C. Thiede, Hyojung Kim, Matthew Valasik
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: Carsey School of Public Policy
view details
Comparing the Affordable Care Act's Financial Impact on Safety-Net Hospitals in States That Expanded Medicaid and Those That Did Not
Examines how Medicaid expansion affected the financial health of safety-net hospitals, and compares hospitals in expansion states with hospitals in non-expansion states. Addresses changes in operating margins, Medicaid inpatient days, Medicaid revenues and costs, and uncompensated care costs. Findings are based on data from Medicare's fiscal year 2012-2015 hospital cost reports.
Author(s): Allen Dobson, Joan E. DaVanzo, Randy Haught, Phap-Hoa Luu
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: Commonwealth Fund
view details
Social Determinants of Health Series: Transportation and the Role of Hospitals
Presents a report on the role of hospitals in providing health-based transportation services. Features case studies of 4 different hospital programs' approach to addressing their patients' lack of access to reliable transit.
Date: 11/2017
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association
view details
Foundations' Efforts To Improve Rural Health Care
Highlights several rural-specific, foundation-funded projects that are working to address challenges associated with rural health and healthcare. Includes examples in the following problem areas: access, care delivery, publications, quality of care, and rural philanthropy.
Citation: Health Affairs, 36(11), 2023-2025
Date: 11/2017
view details